Judge overturns Uber ban in Germany

16 September 2014 Last updated at 14:50

A German judge has overturned a nationwide ban on one of the services offered by the alternative taxi firm Uber.

The temporary injunction banned the start-up from offering its UberPop ride-sharing service in the country.

Frankfurt Regional Court Judge Frowin Kurth ruled that taxi companies in the country had waited too long to request an emergency injunction.

The German Taxi Association, Taxi Deutschland, said that it would appeal.

"The taxi industry accepts competitors who comply with the law. Uber does not," it said in a statement.

For its part Uber welcomed the judge's decision.

"UberPOP is revolutionising transport in cities and beyond by helping to create smarter cities with more transport choices," the firm said.

"Demand is so great all across the country that we expect to double in size by the end of the year and plan to bring Uber to more and more cities across Germany."

Although the temporary injunction against Uber has been lifted, the case goes on as part of an ongoing civil lawsuit brought by Taxi Deutschland.

London protests

There has been mounting opposition to services such as Uber which uses smartphone apps to connect drivers and customers.

UberPop is one of several services offered by the firm and has proved particularly controversial because it uses drivers not directly employed by the company and therefore without professional transportation licenses.

In London, cab drivers launched a day of protests over Uber's services which they claimed broke Transport for London rules.

Similar protests have been held in Paris, Madrid, Rome, Milan and Berlin and the service has also been banned in Seoul.

Uber operates in more than 205 cities across 45 countries.

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Tech firms want 'digital ministers'

16 September 2014 Last updated at 00:00 By Dave Lee Technology reporter, BBC News

An influential group of major technology firms is calling on the UK to appoint "digital ministers" in every government department.

TechUK - which represents more than 850 companies - also demanded rules to allow more skilled technology workers into the country.

"You've got to make sure the UK becomes a hub for digital skills," said TechUK chief executive Julian David.

The proposals will be presented to ministers on Tuesday.

Mr David said current options for migrating digital works - such as a special Entrepreneurs' Visa to help start-ups - was not going far enough.

"My members tell me it helps, but start-ups find it difficult to plot their way through the bureaucracy and the cost."

Bigger companies, he said, complained the process took too long.

More than London

Mr David praised the efforts of organisations like Tech City UK, the government quango helping technology start-ups in the Silicon Roundabout area of east London.

But he said the digital economy must be a concern for the whole country.

"We've got fantastic capability in clusters around the country.

"When you look at places like Cambridge, there's a pattern of success there for growing digitally-focused, very large, very successful companies such as [chip maker] Arm Holdings."

As part of its manifesto for the next government, TechUK has said it wants a Cabinet-level minister representing the interests of the digital economy.

"The next government should ensure there is cabinet-level leadership to develop and execute a single digital strategy that rolls up the digital economy, digitalisation of government and digital inclusion," the document reads.

"Other systemically important policy domains have a clear departmental lead and a strong voice at the Cabinet table - it is time the full significance of digital is recognised in the same way."

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Twitch malware spends users' money

12 September 2014 Last updated at 18:18 By Joe Miller Technology Reporter

Malicious software spread via chat forums on the video games streaming site Twitch can spend users' money without authorisation, it has emerged.

The Finnish security firm F-Secure said clicking on the malware links also enabled infiltrators to wipe accounts on the gaming shop, Steam.

Twitch is advising users not to use links from unknown sources.

The site, which was recently bought by Amazon for $970m (£597m) has more than 55 million unique monthly viewers.

The vulnerability originates from an automated account which, according to F-Secure, "bombards channels and invites viewers to participate in a weekly raffle for a chance to win things such as 'Counter-Strike: Global Offensive' items".

If viewers take the bait, they are invited to fill in their name and email address which then allows the malicious software to gain control, allowing it to:

• Take screenshots
• Add new friends in Steam (a gaming shop and community commonly linked to Twitch accounts)
• Accept pending friend requests in Steam
• Initiate trading with new friends in Steam
• Buy items, if user has money
• Send a trade offer
• Accept pending trade transactions

A spokesman for Twitch told the BBC that the vulnerability was the "first instance" he had seen, but that the site would "remind our community about not clicking on links from unknown sources just like they wouldn't on other social media sites".

He added: "Please note that we give all broadcasters the option to disable links in their chat which can easily prevent this."

Update: On Saturday, a spokesman said Twitch had only received two reports of the malware attack, and had blocked the link.

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First Android One smartphones launch

15 September 2014 Last updated at 09:16 By Leo Kelion Technology desk editor

The first Android One-branded budget-priced "high quality" smartphones have been released in India.

The handsets provide a minimum set of features determined by Google, which has sourced several of the components to help cut manufacturing costs.

The company has also teamed up with a local network to make it cheaper to download Android updates and new apps.

Experts suggest the move should help address criticism of earlier entry-price smartphones.

Sundar Pichai, who oversees Android, said the Android One scheme had delivered economies of scale that meant the first batch of phones could be offered for as low as 6,399 rupees ($105; £65) if bought contract-free.

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Three Indian companies have released the first Android One handsets, as Shilpa Kannan reports

"Our goal was to develop high quality smartphones at an affordable price, with access to connectivity, done at scale around the world," he told the BBC ahead of the launch in Delhi.

"We provide our OEMs [original equipment manufacturers] a menu, effectively.

"They can choose the CPU [central processing unit], the GPU [graphics processing unit], the storage, the type of battery, the type of camera.

"It really saves them a lot of effort in terms of identifying the right hardware [and] doing all the testing you need to do to get the software to run on this hardware.

"We tune it, we work out the bugs… we keep it secure, we update it and so on."

He added the scheme should soon expand to Indonesia, Philippines, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka.

There are no plans to launch the handsets in the West, but Mr Pichai did not rule it out.

Matching specs

The first Android One devices are made by Micromax - already India's bestselling mobile-phone maker - Karbonn and Spice.

To meet Google's minimum standards they all have:

• a 4.5in (11.4cm) display
• 1GB of RAM (random-access memory)
• a 5MP rear camera and a 2MP front one
• a quadcore processor sourced from Taiwanese company Mediatek
• the ability to run the next version of Android, due for release soon

In addition, they have been tailored to suit the local market by including a micro-SD (Secure Digital) slot, a replaceable battery, a built-in FM radio and the ability to support two Sim cards simultaneously.

If connected to Airtel - one of India's most popular networks - data used to download Android updates will not be subtracted from a customer's allowance for the first six months. Users can also download 200MB worth of apps from Google Play on top of their data plan.

Google said it had also customised some of its own apps for India, including:

• the addition of railway bookings and cricket scores to Google Now's card-based results
• an "offline" version of YouTube, so videos can be re-watched without incurring extra data charges after the initial download
• the introduction of 13 local publications to Play Newsstand

The handset makers are allowed to add services and wallpapers of their own, but cannot run a "skin" on top of Android that significantly changes the user interface - something manufacturers have commonly done in the past to distinguish their models.

"We want to deliver a consistent experience on these devices," said Mr Pichai, adding this should prevent the devices taking a performance hit or being incompatible with software updates.

Word of mouth

About 400 million smartphones will be sold in India over the next five years, according to a forecast by PricewaterhouseCoopers, with the majority bought at Android One's price point.

"A lot of the phones that have been sold in this price zone to date have not been particularly high performance or high quality," said Mohammad Chowdhury, the company's Mumbai-based (Bombay) telecoms expert.

"That's meant the experience for users has been less than satisfactory.

"If Google can start convincing people that the experience of using data will be better on these phones, I think that will result in fairly fast uptake, particularly as word of mouth is quite good in India."

Android One's launch comes less than a month after two low-cost smartphones running Mozilla's rival Firefox operating system were launched in India.

The Wall Street Journal has also reported that Samsung intends to sell budget-priced Tizen phones in the country, a system it currently uses to power cameras and smartwatches.

"India and other emerging markets are being targeted by other potentially low-cost platforms," said Chris Green, from the Davies Murphy Group consultancy.

"Google needs to protect Android's market base in these countries, as the low-cost users of today will be the premium users of 10 years time."

More smartphones

Mr Pichai said Google would "constantly evolve" Android One's minimum standards to suit both the needs of future software and the tastes of the various markets it launched into.

He added that handset makers Lenovo, Acer, HTC, Asus, Panasonic and Alcatel had recently joined the programme along with the chipmaker Qualcomm, all of which would launch devices at a later point.

That leaves the bestselling Android handset-maker, Samsung, as a notable holdout.

Even so, Mr Pichai said he expected the company would play a "huge role" in helping offer Android to the "next four billion users".

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Canon printer hacked to run Doom

15 September 2014 Last updated at 12:19

A wireless Canon Pixma printer has been hacked to run classic video game Doom.

The hack was carried out by security researcher Michael Jordon, and it took four months to get the game running on the hardware.

He said he had undertaken the project to demonstrate the security problems surrounding devices that would form the "internet of things".

Canon said it planned to fix the loopholes on future printers to make them harder to subvert.

Control code

Like many modern printers, Canon's Pixma range can be accessed via the net, so owners can check the device's status. However, Mr Jordon, who works for Context Information Security, found Canon had done a poor job of securing this method of interrogating the device.

"The web interface has no user name or password on it," he said.

That meant anyone could look at the status of any device once they found it, he said. A check via the Shodan search engine suggests there are thousands of potentially vulnerable Pixma printers already discoverable online. There is no evidence that anyone is attacking printers via the route Mr Jordon found.

At first glance, the remote access feature did not look like a problem, until Mr Jordon realised it was possible to update the printer's controlling software, known as firmware, via the interface too.

Although the firmware was encrypted, research revealed it was possible to crack this protection system to reveal the core computer code. Reverse engineering the encryption system used by Canon also meant that if Mr Jordon wrote his own firmware the printer should accept it as authentic.

It was then Mr Jordon conceived the idea of getting the 1993 game running on the printer.

"Running Doom, that's real proof you control the thing," he told the BBC.

"The printer has a 32-bit Arm processor, 10 meg of memory and even the screen is the right size," said Mr Jordon. "I had all the bits, but it was a coding problem to get it all running together."

The biggest problem, he said, had been that the printer's firmware lacked functions provided by the operating system on any PC or other device it was running on. A version of Doom does exist that runs on Arm processors, but a lot of coding and experimentation was needed to convert this so it coped with the internal idiosyncrasies of the printer.

Writing code and getting it running sucked up months of Mr Jordon's spare time, and he finally got it to run two days before he was due to give a speech about the work at the UK's 44Con hacker conference.

"The colour palette is still not quite right," he said. "But it proves the point and it runs quite quickly, though it's not optimised."

Mr Jordon has no plans to fine tune the demonstration and do that optimisation or take on more work to get the game beyond its loading screen, given how much trouble it took to get it working at all.

"I'm so sick of it," he said. "I'm done."

On a blog entry about Mr Jordon's work, Canon said it intended "to provide a fix as quickly as is feasible".

This will involve adding a user name and password field to the web interface for future Pixma printers and issuing an update for existing owners to add the same feature.

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Microsoft buys Minecraft for $2.5bn

15 September 2014 Last updated at 14:10 By Joe Miller Technology reporter, BBC News

Microsoft has bought Mojang, the Swedish firm behind the popular video game Minecraft, for $2.5bn (£1.5bn).

The title, which has sold over 54 million copies, allows players to build structures with retro Lego-style blocks, as well as explore a large map and battle others.

The deal was announced by Xbox chief Phil Spencer.

Mojang, whose three founders will leave the company, assured fans that "everything is going to be OK".

Some analysts have speculated the deal is designed to attract more users to Microsoft's Windows Phone devices.

The acquisition comes a year after Microsoft bought the handset and devices division of Finnish mobile phone firm Nokia.

Minecraft is one of the top-selling apps on both Apple's iOS store and and Android's Google Play, and has recently been released for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, further boosting sales.

Last month, it was the third most popular console game, according to market research firm NPD Group, despite being on sale for a while.

The game's developer, Mojang, which was founded in 2009, brought in over $100m in profit last year, and employs about 40 people.

Microsoft said the Mojang team would join its game studio, which is responsible for titles such as Halo, Forza and Fable.

The tech giant's chief executive, Satya Nadella, said: "Minecraft is more than a great game franchise - it is an open world platform, driven by a vibrant community we care deeply about, and rich with new opportunities for that community and for Microsoft."

Opposition to sale

Mojang's founder, Markus "Notch" Persson, has previously criticised Microsoft, and commented to Reuters that the market for Windows phones was "tiny" and not worth developing apps for.

Minecraft has a large and enthusiastic cult following, many of whom have reacted angrily to what they see as a corporate takeover of a communally-spirited independent company.

Continue reading the main story

Not only is [Minecraft] profitable, but it continues to increase in profits years after its release"

End Quote James McQuivey Analyst, Forrester

"Makes me sick, and sad," wrote one user on a popular Minecraft forum. "It would kill the gaming community," EvilBatsu added.

Others expressed concerns about whether fans would be able to exhibit their skills.

"Not only will it cost more money to play the game it will cost people their jobs too. Many people play Minecraft and upload it to YouTube as their career, but if Microsoft takes over there will for sure be copyright issues."

However some enthusiasts made the point that Microsoft could devote larger resources to upgrading and expanding the game.

In a statement, Microsoft said it would maintain Minecraft across all its existing platforms, with a "commitment to nurture and grow it long into the future".

It added that the acquisition was expected to be concluded by the end of 2014.

In an announcement confirming the deal on its website, Mojang reassured gamers, saying: "Please remember that the future of Minecraft and you - the community - are extremely important to everyone involved. If you take one thing away from this post, let it be that."

With regard to Microsoft, Mojang said: "There are only a handful of potential buyers with the resources to grow Minecraft on a scale that it deserves."

The firm added that "Notch" had decided that he "doesn't want the responsibility of owning a company of such global significance".

Developer Notch on selling Minecraft:

"I've become a symbol. I don't want to be a symbol, responsible for something huge that I don't understand, that I don't want to work on, that keeps coming back to me. I'm not an entrepreneur. I'm not a CEO."

Read his statement in full

Why Minecraft?

James McQuivey of analytics firm Forrester, noted that "Minecraft is one of the most important gaming properties in the world".

"Not only is it profitable, but it continues to increase in profits years after its release, largely due to the passionate fan base that invests in building out their own Minecraft worlds.

"That helps explain why Microsoft would want Minecraft and would want to ensure it is always available on Microsoft's gaming platforms.

Prof Mark Skilton, from Warwick Business School, said the acquisition was about building a "strong customer base" for Microsoft.

"The online gaming industry is fast moving from niche collective enthusiast to mass market and Minecraft is a logical move as big business follows the traffic numbers in the digital world."

Last month, Amazon bought Twitch, a site which allows users to watch other people play video games, for $970m (£597m).

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Apple releases U2 album removal tool

15 September 2014 Last updated at 19:32 By Leo Kelion Technology desk editor

Apple has released a tool to remove U2's new album from its customers' iTunes accounts six days after giving away the music for free.

Some users had complained about the fact that Songs of Innocence had automatically been downloaded to their devices without their permission.

It had not been immediately obvious to many of the account holders how to delete the tracks.

The US tech firm is now providing a one-click removal button.

"Some customers asked for the ability to delete 'Songs of Innocence' from their library, so we set up itunes.com/soi-remove to let them easily do so. Any customer that needs additional help should contact AppleCare," spokesman Adam Howorth told the BBC.

Users who remove the album and do not download it again before 13 October will be charged for the 11 tracks if they subsequently try to add them again.

"It's embarrassing for Apple that it's had a bit of a backlash," commented Ian Maude from the media consultancy Enders Analysis.

"It was giving something away to its customers - so that part was really good - but what it should have probably done was make it optional. Not everybody's a U2 fan as it's just discovered.

"Is there any long-term impact? No. It's moved very quickly to fix the problem."

'Blood, sweat and tears'

Apple made the album available to about 500 million iTunes customers in 119 countries to coincide with its iPhone 6 and Watch launch event last week.

U2's singer Bono acknowledged at the time that not everyone would appreciate the gift.

"People who haven't heard our music, or weren't remotely interested, might play us for the first time because we're in their library," he wrote on the band's site.

"And for the people out there who have no interest in checking us out, look at it this way… the blood, sweat and tears of some Irish guys are in your junk mail."

Bono added that Apple had "paid" for the giveaway, and reports have suggested that prime placement of banner ads publicising the album on the iTunes store and other publicity provided by the tech firm might be worth as much as $100m (£62m).

Sales of earlier U2 albums have re-entered iTunes' charts and the band has also raised its profile ahead of an expected tour as well as a planned follow-up album called Songs of Experience.

The new tracks on Songs of Innocence have, however, split the critics.

The Drowned in Sound site suggested that U2 no longer had it in them to make a great album, adding that giving away songs for free had "somewhat devalued a record that cost six years of their lives and a lot of money to make".

But Rolling Stone magazine gave the album its maximum score, saying that it was "a triumph of dynamic, focussed renaissance".

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Debate on internet fast lanes ends

16 September 2014 Last updated at 12:28

More than three million comments, from consumers, companies and other groups, have been submitted to a controversial US debate on the future of the net.

The debate centres on a proposal to allow ISPs, such as Comcast and Verizon, to introduce so-called fast lanes which would deliver paid-for traffic to users more quickly and reliably.

Content providers and net advocate groups believe that would destroy the principle of net neutrality.

The debate closed on 15 September.

US regulation watchdog the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is in charge of making the changes.

Devilish detail

It has been forced to rethink its existing net neutrality rules following a court case in January which ruled that ISP Verizon could charge to carry traffic from bandwidth-heavy services such as Netflix.

It was seen as a challenge to the powers of the FCC with some net advocacy groups calling for the watchdog to completely reclassify broadband from being an information service to a utility, giving it far stronger powers.

Instead the FCC favoured the idea of charging for different levels of internet access if ISPs meet a new standard of "commercial reasonableness" that will be judged on a case-by-case basis.

For their part, ISPs argue that they will not be able to invest in future bandwidth demands unless they are better able to make money from existing services.

"The devil will be in the detail. In the US, it is about what can be considered commercially reasonable," said Ovum analyst Matthew Howett.

"The possibility of 'fast lanes' remains a distinct possibility... but on the assumption that a 'basic' lane remains unaffected in an attempt to avoid a situation of 'haves' and 'have-nots'".

Last week, some high-profile net firms including Twitter and Netflix took part in an internet slowdown protest day and many previously signed a letter sent to the FCC expressing dismay at the proposed changes.

The FCC will mull over all the submissions before adopting new rules. Experts predict changes will be in place by the end of the year.

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Nigerian bank robbery nets millions

16 September 2014 Last updated at 14:34

A Nigerian IT worker is being sought by police for his alleged role in co-ordinating a £25m ($40m) cyber-theft at a bank in Abuja where he worked.

Godswill Oyegwa Uyoyou is being sought by Nigeria's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

A wanted notice claims he helped conspirators dressed as maintenance staff get into the bank so they could use computers to transfer cash.

Local reports suggest the theft was spotted when stolen cash was withdrawn.

Although no members of the gang have been caught, several are being "tracked", Wilson Uwujaren, a spokesman for the EFCC, told News Nigeria.

Details of the robbery are scant but it is thought that Mr Uyoyou and conspirators entered the bank on a Saturday when it was closed and no other staff were working.

The IT staffer was key to the robbery, said the EFCC, because of the access he enjoyed to the computer systems at the bank. This was used to siphon 6.28bn Nigerian Naira into accounts of the conspirators, said the EFCC. So far, the bank at the centre of the theft has not been named.

The EFCC has issued a warrant for Mr Uyoyou's arrest and he is being actively sought in Nigeria.

John Hawes, a computer security researcher at Sophos, said the amount of cash stolen was "unusually large" but the method the gang chose was "all too common".

"Insider risk is a major problem for banks," he wrote on the firm's security blog, "they still have to rely on trusted employees to behave themselves, resist temptation and keep their hands off the huge amounts of funds they may find themselves dealing with every day."

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Giant sensor for Panasonic phone

16 September 2014 Last updated at 16:02

Panasonic has unveiled a hybrid smartphone-camera, at the Photokina trade show in Cologne.

More camera than phone, the Android device has a Leica lens and a 1in, 20-megapixel sensor more often found in Panasonic's dedicated cameras.

The 2.5cm sensor will help the camera take snaps in low light conditions and shoot ultra-high definition video.

Panasonic said the Lumix DMC - CM1 would go on sale towards the end of 2014 in Germany and France.

The phone is expected to cost about 900 euros (£720) when it goes on sale.

It is widely seen as a rival to Samsung's Galaxy K Zoom, which also has a built-in large lens.

The lens and its metal ring, to control aperture and shutter settings, make the CM1 21mm thick - considerably more than contemporary smartphones.

The CM1 also has 11.9cm touchscreen and a dedicated switch that instantly flips it into camera-mode.

Reviewing the gadget at tech news site Pocket-lint, Mike Lowe said it was an "interesting experiment" that "impressed" him more than he had expected.

However, Marc Flores, at Tech Radar, was more critical, saying hybrids satisfied no-one.

"We've tried this before, and it didn't work out so well," he wrote, adding that anyone looking for a good camera should buy a dedicated device.

Anyone keen to take better pictures with a smartphone, he added, should just learn how the professionals did it rather than buy a CM1 and hope that would make all the difference to their snaps.

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